Spending a couple days going through the time-consuming process of boiling tap water and then allowing it to cool off before using it to wash vegetables or spending money to buy bottled water is a pain in the neck and perhaps the wallet, especially if it turns out that the test that promoted a boil water advisory in Thompson Nov. 2 was due to cross-contamination, but it’s better than the alternative.
The likelihood that this was a false alarm is, if not necessarily high, at least not insignificant, given that a subsequent test of water samples taken the day the advisory was issued showed no coliform bacteria. Even if that turns out to be the case, this incident will have provided a lesson to the city and province and Thompson residents on how to deal with a situation when the water is suddenly no longer safe to drink.
If it turns out that the drinking water was tainted, it is unfortunate that it takes two days to find out about it – two days in which people could become ill from drinking the water not knowing that it may be unsafe – but that lag time will never go away. Even if there was a water testing lab in Thompson, the earliest test results could be available would be 24 hours later. Since there isn’t, that time gap increases to two days.
Nevertheless, the city did well in this case by releasing the information it received from the province within less than an hour of learning about the test results from the province. Not only did they post the information on their own website and social media accounts, but newly elected Mayor Colleen Smook took it upon herself to contact this newspaper (along with a couple of other people for whom it isn’t part of their job) in an effort to ensure that the information was in as many places as possible so as many people as possible would be aware of it. That’s how crisis communications is supposed to be handled.
The advisory also provides residents with a reminder that things that we rely on and usually don’t give a second thought to regarding their relative safety are not that way by accident. Trained people are tasked with keeping them that way. It may also nudge us towards making sure we are better prepared for this or other emergencies by keeping a supply of fresh water around our homes at all times, rather than having to rush out to the store on a Friday evening to stock up on bottled water.
Most of all we should be thankful that, for all its real and imagined ills, modern communications technology made it much easier to spread the word about the boil water advisory than it would have been 30 years ago. At that time, we would have had to rely on hearing or seeing the news on the radio or television, or even reading about it in the next day’s newspaper or hearing about it via word of mouth. These days, we can find out just by looking at our phones or tablets or computers (something most of compulsively do anyways). If it tuns out that the presence of coliform bacteria in the water samples was not a case of cross-contamination but an actual issue with the city’s water system, that ease of communication may very well have prevented some health issues. If it wasn’t, as the old saying goes, better safe than sorry.
